Charles Marville’s Paris coming to The Metropolitan Museum of Art

I’m excited for an upcoming show of about 100 photos of a newly haussmannized Paris which opens January 29th. Charles Marville, one of photography’s early powerhouses, started taking photos in 1850 and twelve years later was appointed Paris’s official photographer. His photos helped to ingrain the romantic, iconic Paris so many of us carry in our minds and draw forth when reading Emile Zola or imagining the Impressionists making their way through the city’s streets.

Marville photographed the city’s oldest quarters, and especially the narrow, winding streets slated for demolition. Even as he recorded the disappearance of Old Paris, Marville turned his camera on the new city that had begun to emerge. Many of his photographs celebrate its glamour and comforts, while other views of the city’s desolate outskirts attest to the unsettling social and physical changes wrought by rapid modernization.